Child Abuse Potential Inventory Form

Grover Beach's use of redevelopment funds scrutinized

By LISA RIZZO

Critics of a proposed sale of a community garden allege Grover Beach city leaders have been using state redevelopment funds to bail out the city during revenue shortfalls by funneling money from its Improvement Agency into its general fund. And the city is preparing to do it again.

“The redevelopment agency is clearly getting screwed,” said San Luis Obispo Attorney Babak Naficy who has been tracking the transactions. “The more I look at this, the more it seems to be a scandal.”

Naficy was retained by a new “grass-root neighborhood group” coined as Organization Keeping Recreational Activities (OKRA) which formed to launch legal opposition against a proposed sale of a 6,620 square foot city-owned lot located at 920 Brighton Avenue in Grover Beach which they say is a bad deal for the redevelopment agency.

Like many small cities throughout California, the governing members of the redevelopment bureau known as the Grover Beach Improvement Agency are the same people sitting on the city council. They are required to act in different capacities to look out for the best interest of the agency and the city separately to avoid collusion.

The agency is an arm of the state, a separate legal entity and receives more than $1.1 million annually from the state redevelopment agency to help eliminate blight in the town. State law requires that 20 percent of that money be used to support or create low income housing.

Naficy argues Grover Beach city leaders are not looking out for the best interest of the low-income community which is being shafted by the lack of “due diligence” as the city makes “self dealings.”

One such alleged deal, expected to be approved Monday following a required public protest hearing, is the proposed sale of the Brighton Avenue property to the Improvement Agency for $235,000 to help meet the city’s 2011 budget expectation.

Protesting the sale, OKRA says its main point of contention is city leaders have “grossly inflated” the purchase price for the lot which is “ill-suited for constructing low-income housing.” They believe Grover Beach is motivated by a desire to meet a general fund revenue goal that the city is expecting to help fill a budget gap. OKRA also argues Grover Beach is skirting process by not making the necessary zoning changes first, conducting a conformity report and environmental review.

Filial Therapy with Parents Court Referred for Child Maltreatment ...

The general purpose of this study was to both evaluate the effectiveness of filial therapy and describe the filial treatment process with parents court-referred for maltreatment. In filial therapy, parents learn basic play therapy skills in a group format that they implement in weekly home play sessions. They then generalize these skills into their parenting. Three research questions guided the quantitative portion of this investigation: (1) Is filial therapy effective at reducing the child abuse potential of parents court-referred for maltreatment? (2) Is filial therapy effective at reducing parenting stress for parents court-referred for maltreatment? (3) Is filial therapy effective at strengthening the parent-child relationship for parents court-referred for maltreatment? Qualitative data about parents’ experience in the filial group was also collected and addressed the following questions: (1) How does the filial therapy process affect participants? (2) How does the filial therapy process affect treatment outcome? (3) What changes, in addition to those measured quantitatively, are reported by parents. The experimental group participants (n=7) received 8 weeks of filial therapy (modified from Landreth’s (1991) 10-week model) in 1?-hour weekly sessions. The control group (n=5) received a local agency’s standard treatment. Parents completed two instruments, the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) and the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP). Analyses of covariance indicated that parents significantly reduced there parenting stress and strengthened the parent-child relationship. Although parents did not significantly reduce their child abuse potential in this study, those results were based on an incomplete analysis. Most of the pre-test CAP scores for parents in the experimental group (6 of 7) were invalid as a result of excessive “faking good responses.” As a result, only post-test scores could be compared between the experimental and control groups. The qualitative data revealed that parents made important changes during the filial therapy process.

Essentials of Forensic Psychological Assessment

Evaluating competencies, forensic assessments and instruments

The child abuse potential inventory, manual

Child abuse and neglect, theory, research, and practice

Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and Behavior